Death Stranding 2 seems to have entered the most widely loathed period in the game development industry – crunch, a period where designers work mercilessly long, thankless hours – and even game director Hideo Kojima is feeling the weight of it.
“Tired,” Kojima recently wrote on Twitter, alongside a melancholy photo of the night sky and a very gloomy frowning emoji.
“The most demanding period of game development – both physically and mentally – commonly known as ‘crunch time,'” he elaborated in another Twitter post. “On top of mixing and Japanese voice recording, there’s an inevitable pile of other tasks: writing comments, explanations, essays, interviews, discussions, and non-game-related work. It’s incredibly tough.”
Increasingly, developers have been crusading against the controversially demanding industry practice; in 2024, Dragon Age writer David Gaider said in a PC Gamer interview that, if crunch was truly a necessary part of making games, “then maybe the industry deserves to die.”
Kojima didn’t publicly express any such doubts about crunch time himself, and his studio, Kojima Productions, is no stranger to it – the developer crunched to complete the first Death Stranding in time for its 2019 release.
But it seems that the practice is fueling some of Kojima’s apprehensions about his ability to keep creating. In a separate Twitter post, 61-year-old Kojima said that “At this age, I can’t help but think about how much longer I’ll be able to stay ‘creative.'”
“I want to keep going for the rest of my life, but is it 10 more years? 20?” he continued. “Every day feels like I’m racing against the clock.”